When ethical issues meet cultural differences

1. When ethical issues meet cultural differences Working with English underachieving adolescents Kai Ren Graduate School of Education, Bristol University

2. My PhD: a Mixed Methods Case Study • Quantitative data collection of learning power data and achievement and demographic data of 1000 Y9 students in 4 English schools. • Qualitative data collection to gain an in-depth view of student learning identity and agency. • Intervention study with a sub group of underachievers, based on the data acquired .

3. General ethical concerns • Data protection • Participant’s consent and right of withdrawal • Access to findings

4. More moral concerns The identification as underachiever may risk some negative effect on the selected students.

5. To adopt A positive, respectful and caring attitude towards every participant when working amongst them.

6. Real-world ethics: more complex Episode 1 The story about me directly emailing my teenage participants…

7. My ethical dilemma: Is it inappropriate to write to your adolescent participants even if you are trying to help them?

8. Real-world ethics: more complex Episode 2 The story about meeting one-on-on with my teenage participants

9. My ethical dilemma: I am only a male PhD student from China doing research with English teenagers. Do I really need a criminal record check before I can talk to them individually?

10. Reflections • Tensions exist between doing my research conveniently and strictly following the ethical guidelines.

11. Reflections • Cultural differences seem to complicate the ethical issues in educational research .

12. Reflections • The researcher needs to develop awareness of cross-cultural ethics and handle the issues carefully.

13. Ethics~ A beautiful mind • Thanks !